


I Wish Turkey Only Cost a Nickel

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Sickfic, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home economics. Thanksgiving. Stubborn teenage Winchesters and the perils of self-medicating with cough syrup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Wish Turkey Only Cost a Nickel

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [this lonely prompt](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/228233.html?thread=2473865#t2473865) from last year's Autumn comment-fic meme on [](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/profile)[**hoodie_time**](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/). Title from Adam Sandler's [Thanksgiving Song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z27FKwupds), which, much like this story, is full of 90's references. Thank you to [](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/profile)[**sinnerforhire**](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/) for looking it over and telling me it didn't suck.

It's not like Dean wanted to take home economics. Despite Sam's eye-rolling comments about Dean signing up for the class to get closer to girls, Dean knew that the kind of girls who took home economics in high school were _not_ the kind of girls who were interested in guys like him, with his worn leather jacket and even more battered boots. The kind of girl who'd join Future Homemakers of America wasn't likely to unbutton her lacy little blouse for the new guy with the healing scrape on his cheek and an already-bad attendance record.

By the time he was registering as a transfer in mid-October, the only electives the guidance lady could schedule him for were home ec and psychology. Dean was no way, no how, sitting around listening to a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, surrounded by amateur head-shrinkers. No thank you very much. He figured he might at least learn something useful in home ec, get an easy B, whatever.

He was right about the girls--none of them wanted anything to do with him. He made an odd number in class, so most of the time he worked by himself; that was just fine, he was used to it anyway. And a lot of the girls wore skirts, so at least he could look at a little leg while he listened to crap about the food pyramid and the importance of not serving meals in which everything had the same _shape_. It was boring, but so was most of school, so Dean figured he could go with the flow until it was time to move on to another school district.

He felt like it would be cool to stay for a while, really. They were renting a small one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and everything. Dad slept on the pull-out sofa in the living room when he was home, which wasn't all that much now that Dean was old enough to manage things around the house. Dad had even talked a couple times about maybe getting a truck, letting Dean drive the Impala, but it hadn't happened yet. At least this town had a decent bus system, and the middle school was close enough for Sammy to walk home, so it was okay.

As soon as the middle of November hit, the home ec teacher started making them work on a big project for Thanksgiving. They had to plan menus and gather recipes, research the price for everything and figure out the nutrients per serving. The girls were going nuts, talking about binders and pictures and recipes for stuffing with things like wild mushrooms and pine nuts and other things that Dean would only eat if he were stuck in the woods for a week. Not even Dad had come up with something _that_ sadistic.

Still, Dean didn't really mind the project. It all came down to research and math, and both of those things were okay--a lot better than English anyway. Dean was never a big fan of English class, but the English teacher at this particular school was more of a tool than usual. Dean had a scratchy throat, maybe a pissy little cold or something that had been hanging around for a while, and in the middle of English class he started coughing. Mr. Reiss glared at Dean like he was doing it on purpose, and Dean tried to swallow against the tickle in his throat, but five minutes later he was coughing again. It hurt, like somebody scraping around inside his lungs with a fork, and when he looked up Mr. Reiss was once again giving him the look of death.

"Dean Winchester, that's enough!"

"Sorry," Dean answered, his voice all fucked up from the coughing, and he guess he sounded bad enough to make Mr. Reiss feel guilty because his face softened and he went back to droning on about foreshadowing and John Steinbeck and other things that Dean really, seriously did not care about.

~~~

It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Dean figured he'd procrastinated long enough on his home ec project; he really needed to get going if he wanted to be able to turn it in on Wednesday. He'd meant to start working on it over the weekend, but then Dad came home and most of the weekend was spent running drills in the park and cleaning up weapons.

Dean felt like he was off on everything--too slow, slow enough that Sammy with his scrawny little shrimp legs almost beat him on the track. He'd pushed himself because no way in hell was Dean about to be beat by his little brother, but it left him feeling like he'd run ten miles instead of two, panting like a pack-a-day smoker and coughing from the cold air. Without Dad around as much, he and Sam had slacked off on the regular PT, and Dean could see the disappointment in his father's eyes.

Sunday night, Dad's beeper went off, and Monday morning Dean woke up to find the sofa all folded up and a stack of cash in an envelope on the table. The money was enough to make it clear that Dad wasn't going to be back before the next weekend, that he was going to be away for Thanksgiving. Dean didn't really care. Thanksgiving was a meal, and Dean was totally a fan of food, but he could never understand the big deal Sam made about it.

Last year he even went and ate at some girl's house, couldn't stop talking about a "real" Thanksgiving, a "normal" Thanksgiving, like it couldn't be real unless it looked like something off some stupid family TV show. As far as Dean was concerned, Thanksgiving could be a lot of things. Usually Dad took them to a diner or Golden Corral if they were lucky. If all-you-can-eat buffets that included dessert with eight kinds of pie weren't real Thanksgivings, Dean didn't care.

Sometimes, they just had turkey frozen dinners. One time, back when Sammy was still practically a baby, they'd eaten Thanksgiving dinner in a church. Dean could remember it being really warm and full of people who seemed weird, but mostly he just remembered staying close to Dad, holding tight to Sammy's sticky little hand. Looking back, he figured it must've been some kind of a soup kitchen, but that's one of those things he's never going to ask Dad about, never going to tell Sam.

It didn't matter anyway. Dad left plenty of money, and they could eat out and still have enough left over for mac & cheese and tuna and cereal and everything. Dean was willing to bet that Sam's "real" Thanksgiving last year didn't have eight kinds of pie.

After school on Monday, Dean wished that he'd taken care of the stupid home ec project earlier because all he really wanted to do was go home and chill out. Still, he took the bus to the Food Lion and walked around with a notebook, writing down how much for a can of peas, a can of corn, a box of stuffing, a turkey, and all the other things he needed to meet the basic requirements of the project. He copied down the instructions on the side of the stuffing box and the recipe on the back of a can of pumpkin pie filling. Eventually, a short, pudgy guy with an Assistant Manager badge came up and asked him if he needed any help.

"School project," Dean said, pasting on his best bullshit smile. "Economics." The guy left him alone after that, but Dean hurried anyway because it was ridiculously hot and muggy inside the store, like they had their heat turned up to eleven, and Dean just wanted to get home. The cough was still bugging him, making shoppers in the store look at him like he was contaminating the food or something, so Dean picked up a bottle of cough suppressant and and some store brand Tylenol to replace the almost-empty bottle at home.

Luck was on his side when the bus back toward the apartment came soon after he got to the stop, but inside the bus it was freezing. Dean pulled his coat closed and silently cursed the piece of shit bus with no insulation around the windows. The air felt warmer outside, and after a block and a half walk from the bus stop Dean was finally home.

Inside, Sam was sitting cross-legged on the couch, watching TV and eating cold spaghetti out of the small sauce pan they'd kept the leftovers in.

"Hey, idiot," Dean said. "You know, we do have a microwave in this place."

Sam shrugged, shoveled another fork-full of stiff pasta into his mouth. "Idon'tcare," he mumbled around the mouthful of food.

Dean shook his head and walked over to the kitchenette. He didn't feel like cooking anything either, so he put together three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, poured a glass of milk, and sat at the table with his notes from the grocery store. As much as the whole concept of normal didn't matter to Dean, it seemed like it would be kind of cool, having your own real food at home, no mushy turkey from a frozen dinner and no waitresses looking at you like you're supposed to feel guilty for making them work on a holiday.

It might not even be that hard, and they had some turkeys at the grocery store that weren't as huge as the ones they always had on TV, plus having left-overs would be awesome. They had a stove and everything, and the apartment came with a bunch of random pots and pans, and most of the stuff wasn't that expensive if he just had to feed the two of them instead of the fictional family of six in Dean's home ec project.

"Hey, Sammy?"

"Sam."

Dean sighed and rolled his eyes. "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you think about eating Thanksgiving here?"

Sam put down his pan of spaghetti and looked across the room at Dean like he'd just suggested getting anchovies on pizza. "But I thought we were going to go out somewhere. I hate those frozen dinners." He crossed his arms over his chest. "They suck."

"You suck," Dean answered reflexively. "No, I mean, what if I cooked?"

"You want to eat Hamburger Helper for Thanksgiving?"

Dean ran a hand over his face; Sam was making his head hurt. "No. Jesus, I can read and work the stove, I can cook other things. Like a turkey and stuffing and peas or whatever."

"Uh, okay." Sam looked at Dean like maybe Dean was a pod person or planning to turn the turkey into an explosive. Which, well, would be seriously nasty but kind of cool, honestly.

A cough bubbled up in Dean's chest again, and he felt something gooey slide up into his mouth. When he spit it into the paper towel he was using for a napkin, it was thick and dark yellow, like what had come out of the water creature _thing_ he and Dad had ganked a year or so back. Suddenly, Dean's remaining half sandwich didn't look very appealing.

"You sick?"

Dean looked up at Sam, who was scraping the bottom of the pan with his fork. "Nah, just got too much peanut butter stuck in my throat. Hey, you want this?" He held up the left over sandwich half.

"Sure!"

Dean dropped the PB&J in Sam's hand and then retreated to the bathroom, where he leaned against the wall and pulled the bottle of cough suppressant from his pocket. It was a pain in the ass to open and tasted like sugar-coated crap, but if it made his stupid cough go away it would be worth it.

~~~

Tuesday sucked, but Dean kept himself dosed up with cough syrup and Tylenol, which stopped the cough and kept him under the teachers' radar. He spent his study hall in the library, looking up all the nutritional information for his Thanksgiving project. After that, it was just math, adding and dividing the dollars and cents, the calories and the protein and the RDAs. It was tedious and tiring, and he had a feeling the teacher wasn't going to be as happy with his menu of plain peas and boxed stuffing as she would be with the girls' menus with the pecan candied yams and lemon grilled asparagus or whatever. But he was meeting the requirements, and nobody he knew actually wanted to eat all those weird things.

Dean almost fell asleep on the bus home from school, and he did fall asleep on the couch, watching _Roseanne_ with Sam. He just wanted his stupid cold to either go away or wait until Friday. One more day of school, then he could cook for Sam, and then three days of weekend. But he wasn't sneezing at all, and the cough stayed away as long as he took the cough syrup, so he figured it was probably going away. He was just tired, being lazy because Dad wasn't around to keep him on the ball.

~~~

Wednesday went by in a haze. The teachers all seemed to have given up on the concept of getting anybody to focus on work, or maybe they didn't want to be at school either, and other than turning his project into the home ec teacher his biggest challenge was staying awake through a series of movies and filmstrips. He took cough syrup in the bathroom between fifth and sixth period and made a mental note to pick up some more because there was only another swallow or two in the bottom of the bottle.

He wasn't planning on doing any studying over the weekend, so he dumped all of his books in his locker, leaving only the notebook with his cooking research in it in his backpack. He took the bus out to Food Lion again, and this time he got a shopping cart. A turkey that wasn't frozen, a box of stuffing, a packet of gravy power, frozen bread rolls, a frozen pie crust, and cans of peas, carrots, cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie filling. He felt like there was something he was forgetting, but he pulled out the list from his backpack, and he had everything other than butter, but they already had a tub of margarine at home.

He paid for his groceries, stuffed everything other than the turkey into his backpack, and got on the bus back home. The bus was freezing again, and Dean felt a chill rattle through him, shaking teeth and everything like he was camped out in the middle of snowy woods waiting for a black dog rather than sitting inside a bus. He couldn't wait to get home.

The walk home from the bus stop felt like a lot longer than a block and a half. He bent forward against the weight on his back and the straps felt like they were pushing down into his lungs or something. The plastic bag with the turkey in it was cutting off the circulation to his fingers by the time he got to the front door, and Dean couldn't deal with the idea of digging around in his pocket for the key. He knocked at the door with his elbow and called out, "Sammy! Let me in!"

He saw the light coming through the peephole obscured--good boy--and then Sam opened the door. "God, can't you open the door yourself?"

"I'm carrying our future delicious Thanksgiving dinner, give me a break." Dean pushed in past Sam and heard the door close behind him, but he could feel Sam watching him.

"Are you okay? You look sick or something."

"And you look like a shrimp that crawled out of the ocean." Dean put town the turkey and pulled off his backpack, glad to be rid of the pressure.

"Haha, I'm so hurt. But you know, if you're sick you don't have to cook." Dean turned around to see Sam watching him with that annoyingly earnest face. "I don't mind."

"We're not canceling Thanksgiving because I have a pussy little cold."

"So you _are_ sick!"

"Aw, shut up." Dean loaded the food into the fridge and freezer and cabinets and then took off his watch to set the alarm for 4am. "Look, I'm going to take a shower and then hit the hay. I have to get up at ass o'clock to put the turkey in the oven."

"Okay." Sam bit his lip and shuffled one foot behind the other. "Um, can I go to the movies with my friend David tomorrow?"

Dean closed his eyes, last year's drama of eating Thanksgiving at a friend's house coming back full-force. "But I'm cooking."

"No, I know! Not at dinner time, just earlier. David's dad always takes him and his brother to the earliest movie on Thanksgiving to stay out of his mom's way when she's cooking I guess. He said they could pick me up and I could come too. I'd be home by two. Please?"

"Okay, whatever. What are you going to see?"

" _Star Trek: First Contact_!"

Dean shook his head. "You are such a geek. You're going to watch _Voyager_ tonight, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Well, it comes on after _Sentinel_."

"I'm totally not related to you," Dean muttered as he walked off to the bathroom.  
"You know you watch it too!" Sam called after him, and Dean sighed. He looked at them sometimes, when there was an explosion or a hot girl. Or whatever.

He was in the shower, the water pounding down on his shoulders so hot he was almost dizzy from the steam, when he realized what he'd forgotten. Cough syrup. Crap. He hoped he could make it to Friday with what was left, plus the Tylenol, because there was no way he was going to the 7-11 up the street and paying eight bucks for three bucks worth of medicine.

Hot as the shower had been, the air in the bedroom was freezing. Dean pulled on sweatpants and a t-shirt and crawled under the covers, ready to drop off into sleep. Only, he couldn't get comfortable on his back, and it felt almost like he couldn't breathe. Stupid cold. He turned over on his side, mashed up his pillow to support his head, and finally fell asleep.

~~~

Dean woke up to the alarm on his watch frantically beeping, and he groped for it, turned it off before it woke up Sam. Dealing with a cranky, sleep-deprived tween all day really wasn't his idea of a good time. As soon as he sat up, he felt a cough building in his chest again, so he took off for the bathroom and behind the closed door, with the bathroom tap running to white out the sound, he coughed. And coughed and coughed some more, leaning over the sink, hands braced on the sides to hold him up, until another glob of dark yellow crap fell into the sink and slithered toward the drain where it was washed away by the water.

Dean swallowed hard, breathed against the sandpaper-rough feeling in his lungs. He thought about maybe puking, but then his chest and stomach settled. He felt a little dizzy, but since he hadn't even eaten any dinner the night before he figured he just needed some food, sugar, something. He swigged down half of the last remaining cough syrup and then went out to the kitchen and swallowed three Tylenol with a glass of milk.

The turkey was more complicated than Dean had expected--and more disgusting. He cut the plastic wrapping and pulled it off, then fished around inside the turkey until he found the bag of...guts. Dean had seen a lot of disgusting things in his seventeen (almost eighteen, almost eighteen) years, but the bag full of organs turned his stomach. He'd seen worse, spilled on the forest floor, steaming and bleeding and--Dean pulled away from the turkey and stumbled two steps away to the sink, heaved up the milk and the pills and the cough syrup, all of it bitter and horrible, clinging to his tongue and his throat.

He yanked on the faucet to wash the puke away and then put head under the tap, drank some water, spit it out, rinse and repeat. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure his father's voice in his head. _Man up, son. You made a commitment, and now you've got to follow through. Damn turkey's not going to bite you, now come on._ Dean turned back to the turkey and picked up the bag of organs, tried not to look at it as he carried it to the trash and dropped it in, where it fell under a pile of lighter things and disappeared from view. It didn't count as wasting food if it was something nobody in their right mind wanted to eat.

That left the turkey itself, which was slimy and gross, dead skin under his hands, but he pushed through getting it ready to go in the oven. He tried not to smell it, found himself taking quick little breaths through his mouth, his heart racing like there was something to fight, something to chase. "Damn bird's already dead," he murmured to himself. "Chill the fuck out."

Finally, with the turkey out of sight and the kitchen warming up from the heat of the oven, Dean took the last bit of cough syrup to replace what he'd sent down the drain and fixed a bowl of cereal. It was weird, sitting on the couch so early in the morning, poking at a bowl of raisin bran with a spoon. Being up early usually meant gathering weapons, packing bags, getting in the car to go on a hunt or get the hell out of town. Or else coming home from a night of hunting, maybe staggering tired, maybe high on adrenaline.

Dean didn't need to do anything else in the kitchen for a while, but he didn't feel comfortable with going back to sleep with the oven on. Piece of crap apartment probably didn't have a working smoke detector, and the last thing, the _last_ thing, he wanted was a fire. Dean picked at his cereal until it was a soggy mess in the bottom of the bowl and then just sat on the couch, staring at the TV with the sound muted, running through what he needed to do the rest of the day.

Baste the turkey, make the stuffing, baste the turkey some more, make the pie, turn the turkey around, make the gravy, put the rolls in the oven, heat up the vegetables. Maybe he should've bought some potatoes, even just a packet of instant. Maybe he should get Sammy to watch the oven while he caught the bus back to Food Lion and got some potatoes and cough syrup. And maybe some ginger ale.

Dean shook his head and pulled the ratty old afghan that came with the place up over himself. There was no way he was going out, and he wasn't even sure if the buses ran on Thanksgiving. It was probably against the rules of the bus driver union or something. He ran through his plans again in his head; he wanted everything to come out right, needed Sam to love it. For a minute, just a minute, he wished hard for the sound of the Impala pulling up outside, Dad's key rattling in the door.

The second dose of cough syrup stayed down, and once it kicked in Dean made some coffee and took some more Tylenol and started to feel more like a human being and less like some kind of ghoul that needed killing. Eventually, Sam woke up and came out to eat his own bowl of cereal, and Dean went to put on real clothes so he could wave to Sam's friend and his dad without looking like a pathetic bum.

As the turkey cooked, it looked a lot less disgusting and a lot more like food, and Sam even said it smelled good. Then Sam took off to go to his geek movie, and Dean set to work on the rest of the meal. He wished he had two ovens, like the nice houses on TV always had, but he had the times figured out to make it work with just the one narrow oven.

In between tasks, Dean sat at the table, and since nobody was watching he let his head rest in his hands, his elbows square on the table. He wasn't coughing anymore, but he was just so tired. Somehow, picking up a pan filled with stuffing felt like moving a footlocker filled with books, and standing up from the chair felt like hoisting himself out of a grave. He tried to focus on the next three days of weekend time, no studying. And if he was sick, Dad would give him a break on training, if Dad even came home.

When his gut gurgled unhappily, he shuffled off to the bathroom. When he was done, looking at his face in the bathroom mirror, Dean knew he looked like shit, all pale, freckles sticking out more than usual, dark shadows under his eyes like a junky in a bus station. But dinner was almost ready, and they'd be able to eat soon after Sam got home. Back out in the kitchen, Dean drank some more coffee, craving the warmth and the steam as much as the caffeine.

Sam came through the door with a smile on his face, which was cool, and as Dean pulled together the last minute things--carving the turkey, getting the heated up veggies into bowls and the rolls into a pile on a plate--Sam set the table and babbled on about the movie. Dean caught random words--Picard, the future, SO COOL DEAN. Sam didn't shut up until he had food in his mouth, and Dean watched him, hoping it was okay.

"S'good, Dean!" Sam grinned around a mouthful of turkey and stuffing, and Dean looked down, smiling and feeling stupid for it. He took a bite of the turkey and it seemed kind of dry to him, but not too bad. Just, nothing tasted good. He felt like he was eating the way Sam did when he was three years old, putting a pea in his mouth, and then another pea, and then a piece of carrot. It all sat in his stomach like it wasn't too happy to be there, but Dean wasn't going to _not eat_ this Thanksgiving meal he was so worked up about making.

"Hey." Sam's voice startled Dean out of his contemplation of the stuffing, and he looked up to see if Sam needed more cranberries or something. "Is your cold worse? You look kind of--" Sam grimaced. "Bad."

Dean shrugged. "Nah. I mean, maybe a little." A cough came up through his chest, pushed past his throat even though he tried to stifle it, like talking about it brought it back. _Cough syrup wearing off,_ Dean told himself. _Sucks to be me._ He coughed into his hands for a minute until his chest settled down and when he opened his eyes Sam was standing in front of him holding out a glass of water.

"Thanks," Dean rasped. He sipped at the water, not wanting to set off his throat or his stomach or anything else that might decide to revolt on him. Sam was still standing there with his face all scrunched up in concern. "I'm fine, just got something stuck in my throat. Come on, eat. There's lots more."

Sam sat back down and ate the rest of what was on his plate, plus a couple more rolls, and he acted like he didn't notice when Dean wrapped foil over his own picked-over plate and put it in the fridge with the rest of the leftovers.

Now that all of the cooking was over with, Dean felt completely justified in stretching out on the couch under the afghan. It was hard to relax, his heart still beating hard like there was anything to get excited about, his back aching where it pressed against the not-so-overstuffed back of the couch, but he closed his eyes and listened to Sam turning pages as he sat in the armchair reading some paperback. He thought about getting back up, going into the bedroom to get another blanket because he was freezing, but it didn't feel worth the effort. Dean breathed and swallowed back the urge to cough, and eventually he fell asleep.

He woke up coughing. It felt like his lungs were trying to evacuate his body by way of his throat, and he sat up, his head spinning. Dean felt Sam's hand on his arm, but he couldn't focus, just stood up and stumbled to the bathroom. Leaning on the sink, he hacked up a gob of green gunk laced with red. it felt like there was more gunk, lots of it, but he couldn't get it up past his throat, so he just coughed and coughed, hacking until he had to sink to his knees and puke in the toilet, all that dinner he'd worked so hard on.

Dean knew Sam was watching, felt the burn tears in his eyes from the coughing and the pain, and he was so tired he just wanted to go back to sleep. He slumped down all the way, let his hot cheek rest on the cool tile of the floor. His chest and his stomach and his back were all pain and revolt but this, this touch of hard coolness against the pounding heat in his head, was perfect. Dean focused on it, tried to pull himself together.

After a minute, it was better. He could breathe, and he didn't need to cough or puke or anything. Maybe that was the worst of it.

"Dean?"

He felt Sam's hand on his head, and he sat up to see another one of those scrunched up looks on Sam's pointy little face. "Sorry, Sammy. M'okay."

"Dude, you have a fever, and you just puked up a lung or something."

"Ugh, don't remind me." Dean pulled himself to his feet and splashed some water on his face, brushed the puke taste out of his mouth.

"I think you need to go to the doctor. Or the hospital."

"Nah, I just missed a dose or two of Tylenol, and I ran out of cough syrup. I'll take some drugs, be better in the morning, you'll see."

Sam frowned but didn't argue, so Dean pushed past him. He shuffled into the kitchen and swallowed four Tylenol--one at a time, each with its own little sip of water for his suddenly-delicate stomach. The room was cold so he grabbed the afghan off the couch and headed straight back to the bedroom, trailing one hand along the wall to keep himself straight. Shucking off his jeans and pulling on sweats felt like a lot of work, but it was more comfortable. He rolled himself up in the afghan as he curled up under the rest of the covers and dropped down into sleep.

~~~

There was more coughing, Sam's hands on him, his own arms pushing himself up in bed to get more room, more air, then there was sleep again.

~~~

There was coughing and pain, and Dean heard a woman's voice. And then a man's voice--not Dad. "Sammy!" He tried to call out, but the word was stuck in his chest. He felt hands on him that weren't Sam's, and then he was so cold. There was movement and _so cold, so cold_ and something rolled and _sick, sick_. Sam's voice, yelling from too far away. And then nothing.

~~~

"Dean?" A man's voice. Dad. "Son, you waking up?"

Dean opened his eyes, pushing past the sticky weight of them, and then squinted against the too-bright light. Then Dad's hand was on his forehead, a warm weight blocking some of the light. "When'd you get home?" Dean asked, his voice slurring despite his best efforts.

Dad laughed, sort of, a short chuckle low in his chest. "A few hours ago." He looked at his watch. "Or so. Though I don't know if pulling up in front of the apartment long enough for your brother to jump in the car exactly counts as being home."

"What--" Dean felt a tickle in his throat and tried to swallow past it. "What happ--" the cough ambushed him, tearing through his chest, and Dean closed his eyes but he felt his father's arm around his back hoisting him up to sit straighter and something plastic in front of his mouth. When the slimy gunk slid across his tongue he spit and spit and gagged, but nothing else came up. Dean opened his eyes as he felt himself being lowered back down to the bed. He panted, trying to get his breathing to settle down. "Sorry."

Dad shook his head and leaned forward against the railing around Dean's bed instead of sitting back down. "Don't be sorry--that crap needs to get up and out of you. Which is _exactly_ \--" Dad's voice started to rise, but he cut himself off.

Dean couldn't figure out what Dad was pissed off about, but then he thought about the hunt, the hunt that he'd probably had to cut short all because of Dean's stupid cold getting out of hand. "Sorry," he said again. "What happened?"

Dad closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through his nose. When he looked at Dean again, he was calmer. "You got pneumonia, helped along by that cough syrup you were taking--stored all that crap up in your lungs instead of getting it out."

"Sam freaked out?" Dean remembered puking and Sam hovering around him.

"Sammy did a good job. He paged me. I was in the middle of getting some grub, so I managed to call him back right away. When he told me how bad off you were, I got back on the road in this direction."

"I woulda been okay," Dean mumbled.

Dad's eyes went hard, his mouth flattened into a straight line, but then he put his hand on Dean's cheek, tapped his fingers on the oxygen tube Dean hadn't noticed. Hadn't realized he was too out of it to notice. "He beeped me again, and I had to stand in the parking lot of some Amoco station and tell Sam that lips turning blue meant it was time to call 911." Dad pulled his hand back and ran it through his own hair. "I guess I need to get one of those goddamn cell phone things if you boys are going to keep making life this interesting."

Dean tried, belatedly, to take stock of himself. Other than the oxygen, he had an IV but everything else seemed to be tube-free. His chest hurt, but everything was attached. "Sammy okay?"

"He's fine." Dad pointed to the corner in the other side of the room, and there was Sam, asleep sitting up, slumped sideways against the wall with Dad's coat draped over him. "The paramedics wouldn't let him ride with, and he was mad as hell. Worried about you."

"Sorry," Dean said again, because he couldn't think of anything better. His eyes felt heavy again and he yawned right in Dad's face.

Dad's hand was on him again, ruffling his hair, and Dean let his eyes close. "Go on back to sleep. We'll go back to the apartment in the morning."

~~~

When Dean woke up again, it was light outside and he wasn't connected to any kind of tubes, which was a massive improvement over the last things he could remember. He was alone in the room, other than whoever was on the other side of the curtain, and he still felt like crap, but at least he wasn't coughing.

The door opened, and Sam came in, creeping past the curtained-off bed and then running over to stand next to Dean. "Dean! You're awake!"

"No shit, Sherlock." The last word came out as a croak, and then a cough burst up into his throat again. Dean covered his mouth with one hand, his other hand wrapped around his chest to press against the ache in his lungs, his ribs. When it was over and he could take a steady breath again, Dean took his gunk-splattered hand away from his mouth.

"Grooooss," he and Sam said in tandem, and then Dean wiped it on the far edge of his sheet.

Sam just rolled his eyes and then looked down, tracing the squares on the floor with the toe of his sneakers. "You should've said you felt so bad. We could've found a clinic or something instead of--" Sam looked up with way too much worry on his face and shrugged.

"I'm okay, see? And anyway, I didn't want to mess up Thanksgiving."

Sam rolled his eyes again. "God, what is it with Thanksgiving all of a sudden, like it's your favorite thing or something? You have to cook all day even when you have _pneumonia_? What's the big deal?"

"Seemed like a big deal when you had to go eat at that girl's house last year."

Sam opened his mouth to respond, but then Dad walked through the door, holding a pharmacy bag. "Sam, I thought you were going to get Dean his clothes so we can get out of here."

"Sorry, I forgot." Sam flashed Dean a sheepish smile and then darted over to the small cabinet in the room to get a plastic hospital bag. In the bag were a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, both Dad's, and the pair of mud-stained sneakers Dean kept in the trunk.

"I didn't want to run back home, and the clothes you got here in were pretty nasty. I didn't think you'd want to wear your old man's briefs, so I figured you could go commando until we get home. That work for you?"

"Whatever." Dean felt a cough trying to escape on the heels of the word, but he swallowed it back. "I just want to go home."

~~

Home was good. Home was the old scratchy sofa and the worn, ugly afghan. Dad handed Dean a huge horse pill antibiotic and made him take a puff off an inhaler, but then Dean stretched out on the sofa and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels until he found a movie with some cops and a car chase. He didn't even know what it was, but he didn't care. Sam pushed Dean's feet aside and sat on the other end of the couch, flicking at Dean's toes until Dean reached up to smack him and Dad told them both to cut it out.

Dean drifted off to the clatter of fake gun-fire, and when he woke up the couch felt crowded. He opened his eyes to see Sam's feet almost in his face, Sam stretched out from the opposite direction like he didn't have a perfectly good bed in the other room.

The lamp next to the couch was turned off, but light glowed from the kitchen. Dean extracted himself from the couch without waking up Sam and then stood coughing for a minute, took a puff off the stupid inhaler when he was done.

"You okay?"

Dean turned around to see Dad watching him from the kitchen table. He had a plate of food in front of him, a can of beer next to his hand. "Yeah, better." Dean sat down in the chair across from him and nodded at the food, the leftovers from Thanksgiving. "You found the leftovers."

"Sam told me you made dinner. And it's pretty damn good, son. You think you could eat anything?"

Dean's mouth tasted like he'd been sucking on pocket change, but he was hungry. "Some stuffing maybe?" He started to stand up, but Dad grabbed his forearm and held him down in his seat.

"I can get you some damn stuffing, son." Dad pulled the foil-covered pan out of the fridge and spooned some stuffing onto a plate, shoving it into the microwave with more force than necessary. "What gave you the idea to make all this stuff? And when the hell did you learn how to cook anything like this?" He didn't sound mad, just curious, like Dean had decided to do something completely weird.

"I dunno, I thought it would be nice." Dean shrugged, winced at the pull on his sore ribs, didn't want to say, _I wanted to give Sammy something normal._ "And, uh, I'm taking this class at school."

"A cooking class?" Dad pulled the plate out of the microwave before it could beep and put it on the table in front of Dean.

"Yeah, pretty much." Dean took a bite of the stuffing, and it tasted weird from the antibiotics, but felt warm and good in his stomach.

Dad sat back down and looked at Dean, one eyebrow raised. "It's home ec, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess." Dean braced himself for whatever Dad might have to say about it, but he just laughed, low and quiet, a real smile on his face even though he looked tired as he tucked back into his turkey and peas.

"Well, you've got a week off school, and we're going to stick around another month, probably. What do you think they'll teach you how to make for Christmas?"

"Oh, God." Dean shook his head and put another forkful of stuffing in his mouth. Then again, maybe they'd make cookies, and there were a couple of cookie sheets in the cabinet next to the stove.

Pneumonia sucked ass, but home ec--maybe--wasn't the worst idea in the world.


End file.
